Okay! Here's the first (hopefully monthly) set of puzzles! Feel free to discuss them and post your work or solutions in this thread. Out of courtesy, PLEASE use the [ spoiler ] tag if you are posting a solution.
There are five puzzles, and I've included an estimated difficulty rating. Do your best, and I hope you enjoy them! Don't forget to be on the lookout for clues!
EDIT: By the way, when I put something as [ code ], the "Code:" part isn't meant to be part of the puzzle. It's just that I have no other choice when I want to preserve spacing.
-- puzzle1.jan05 -- just for starters -- difficulty: 3/5
The days grow insatiably long.
I yearn for the persimmons and autumn air of a long-gone childhood,
those schoolbells ringing in a year renewed,
'companied by enthusiastic youth
and the scent of apple cinnamon and nutmeg in the air.
But all I have are ersatz dreams
and I, dissatisfied, must hang my heavy heart,
eschewed by fortune's eye.
Longingly, I thumb through photos old,
like a habitue of memory lane,
in hope to cast away those unfriendly thoughts.
There go the newlyweds! The newly born! The baptized!
The angels and the demons playing on All Hallows'!
The birthday boys and girls, endowed with shower'd gifts!
But now the world remonstrates, waking me back
to something curious in the distance... what is it?
-- puzzle2.jan05 -- recycling -- difficulty: 2/5
1) e e i r
2) r l l s
3) o a e e
4) t t s p
5) n s t d
6) s p n a
bikvhkxunioqseuretnemioqhbzig
-- puzzle3.jan05 -- T is for... -- difficulty: 2/5
1) t for Garnet
2) s for amethyst
3) u for aquamarine
4) d for diamond
5) a for emerald
6) l for pearl
7) r for ruby
8) e for peridot
9) s for sapphire
10) o for opal
11) p for topaz
12) i for turquoise.
IPOSERLADUST anagrams i see offhand...
A Stupid Loser?
edit - oh, the U should be an A...
Paradise Lost, by John Milton.
edit again - this is the answer to #4. And spoilers.
In number 3, are we trying to find a phrase, or am I completely on the wrong path, here? I found a large binary number in that mess, but that doesn't seem to be much of an "answer." *shrug*
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Dacarnix
------------------
Don't say I'm out of touch with this rampant chaos - your reality
I know well what lies beyond my sleeping refuge - the nightmare I built my own world to escape
from "Imaginary" by Evanescence
If I take the first letters of the (somewhat arbitrarily chosen) most cumbersome words in each line, I get the phrase 'I precede thunder,' which would obviously be Lightning. Is that the answer? Or just a part of it? Or am I barking up the wrong tree entirely?
help im a bug: Heh. Well you did get the right answer, but without actually figuring out the puzzle Examine those words carefully. Notice anything interesting about them?
Wow i have no idea on any of them... I even pulled out a Braille chart for number 3 to see if that helped lol. I got number 1 the same way bug did. No idea how to actually solve it though...
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-banner by Dementia Blader, avatar by Zoobamaphooza
#1 - solved by help im a bug (well, he got the answer, but not the method)
Here's a hint for those trying to get the method:
the title is a clue, along with the start of the poem - "days"
#2 - no one seems to have made any progress, or even tried
Hint:
the title is a clue to what your approach should be. once you solve the first 6 lines, you'll have the key to the cipher question. just remember that it pays to, er, think laterally. i was hoping that putting the puzzle in monospace font might make it easier to see what to do, but maybe it didn't :slant:
#3 - not too much progress made on this. most have gotten the obvious "winning moves," but no one knows what to do with it
Hint:
aside from tic-tac-toe, what other word starting with T does the shape of the grid remind you of?
#4 - solved by help im a bug
#5 - no one here has made any progress, but massive cracked the first step on the 'News thread. check the thread over there if you want to see what he got
Well, I'm going to go out on a limb here, I know you said to check the news thread, but I wanted to try #5 myself.
The d is for "descending" or some such, meaning letters that go below the line are ds. a is "ascending" such that any letter that doesn't go below the line is an a, provided it is made of straight lines. Any non d that has curves is an x. Seems like it would take a great deal of effort to decipher though. I may try it if I have some free time. Dont know if this is correct, but I tried
That's pretty good, Scius! Here's the more complete explanation as I posted on 'News:
In printing, the "x-height" is the common term for the height of the letter 'x' (obviously). The part of a letter that goes above the x-height is called the ascender, while the part of a letter that goes below the baseline is called the descender. Hence, x, a, and d. Don't worry, there aren't any j's in the cipher
Also, just to clarify, all letters are assumed to be lower-case for this puzzle, even at the start of a sentence and for proper nouns (there's only one proper noun).
And don't worry about going out on a limb when it comes to puzzling
For anyone who wants the full set of solutions, here you go:
1.
I'm not sure if the "starters" and "days" were good enough hints. Anyway, from each line, take all the words that include an abbreviation of a day of the week (Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat), and the first letters of those words spell out "I precede thunder." The answer is obviously lightning
2.
This puzzle was an encrypted question. The "recycling" tried to hint at anagrams (maybe I'm not very good at hinting). You needed to put the lines 1-6 in such an order that the letters spelled out words when read down. The correct solution for that part was:
5) n s t d
1) e e i r
6) s p n a
4) t t s p
3) o a e e
2) r l l s
This spelled out "nestor," "septal," "tinsel," and "drapes." The key for the encryption is then 516432.
Shifting the letters in the code backward in the alphabet (wrapping around to z from a) by the corresponding number (shift the first letter by 5, the second letter by 1, etc. while repeating the key so that the seventh letter is also shifted by 5, the eighth letter by 1, and so on) gives:
As some people determined, the tic-tac-toe grids provided a code, based on what the correct winning or blocking move would be. Again, this puzzle was the victim of poor hints, but I was hoping some would make the leap to try converting this into a telephone keypad code. Using the letters on the telephone keys (as an additional help, I also coded vowels with a move by O and consonants with a move by X), you can get the following clues: Miami, Bermuda, San Juan. The answer was the Bermuda Triangle.
4.
help im a bug figured this out well. Each line was an anagram of the gemstone of the corresponding month (1 for January, etc.), minus a letter. The missing letters formed a further anagram, spelling out Paradise Lost by John Milton.
5.
This was a tough one, but some figured out the first step. In printing, the height of the letter 'x' is referred to as the 'x-height.' Any part of a letter that goes above the height is called an 'ascender,' and any part of a letter that goes below the baseline is called a 'descender.' The code told you which letters had an ascender, a descender, or neither (there were no j's).
The starting point should have been the words 'aadxaad' and 'dxxadx,' which have unusual shapes. Some trial-and-error would have produced a few plausible words, including 'dignity' and 'grudge.' Some further research would confirm that the passage is the opening of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.
Anyway, I hope you had fun trying to solve them, and I think I've learned some stuff about providing better hints. So go check out the February puzzles!
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There are five puzzles, and I've included an estimated difficulty rating. Do your best, and I hope you enjoy them! Don't forget to be on the lookout for clues!
EDIT: By the way, when I put something as [ code ], the "Code:" part isn't meant to be part of the puzzle. It's just that I have no other choice when I want to preserve spacing.
-- puzzle1.jan05 -- just for starters -- difficulty: 3/5
The days grow insatiably long.
I yearn for the persimmons and autumn air of a long-gone childhood,
those schoolbells ringing in a year renewed,
'companied by enthusiastic youth
and the scent of apple cinnamon and nutmeg in the air.
But all I have are ersatz dreams
and I, dissatisfied, must hang my heavy heart,
eschewed by fortune's eye.
Longingly, I thumb through photos old,
like a habitue of memory lane,
in hope to cast away those unfriendly thoughts.
There go the newlyweds! The newly born! The baptized!
The angels and the demons playing on All Hallows'!
The birthday boys and girls, endowed with shower'd gifts!
But now the world remonstrates, waking me back
to something curious in the distance... what is it?
-- puzzle2.jan05 -- recycling -- difficulty: 2/5
-- puzzle3.jan05 -- T is for... -- difficulty: 2/5
-- puzzle4.jan05 -- hidden treasure? -- difficulty: 2/5
1) range
2) thy mate
3) a ramequin
4) domain
5) red elm
6) reap
7) buy
8) tripod
9) happier
10) pal
11) A to Z
12) our quest
________ ____ by J.M.
-- puzzle5.jan05 -- ups & downs -- difficulty: 4/5
title and author?
-- END PUZZLES --
Maybe I should've started out with simpler ones. I'll try giving out more hints soon.
5 is something I'm progressing slowly on
-Goblinboy
2) s for amethyst
3) u for aquamarine
4) d for diamond
5) a for emerald
6) l for pearl
7) r for ruby
8) e for peridot
9) s for sapphire
10) o for opal
11) p for topaz
12) i for turquoise.
IPOSERLADUST anagrams i see offhand...
A Stupid Loser?
edit - oh, the U should be an A...
Paradise Lost, by John Milton.
edit again - this is the answer to #4. And spoilers.
------------------
Don't say I'm out of touch with this rampant chaos - your reality
I know well what lies beyond my sleeping refuge - the nightmare I built my own world to escape
from "Imaginary" by Evanescence
-banner by Dementia Blader, avatar by Zoobamaphooza
#1 - solved by help im a bug (well, he got the answer, but not the method)
Here's a hint for those trying to get the method:
#2 - no one seems to have made any progress, or even tried
Hint:
#3 - not too much progress made on this. most have gotten the obvious "winning moves," but no one knows what to do with it
Hint:
#4 - solved by help im a bug
#5 - no one here has made any progress, but massive cracked the first step on the 'News thread. check the thread over there if you want to see what he got
edit - I have actually been working on 5 for a while but was waiting until I had it completed to post. However, all I have been able to decipher is
Also, just to clarify, all letters are assumed to be lower-case for this puzzle, even at the start of a sentence and for proper nouns (there's only one proper noun).
And don't worry about going out on a limb when it comes to puzzling
1.
2.
This spelled out "nestor," "septal," "tinsel," and "drapes." The key for the encryption is then 516432.
Shifting the letters in the code backward in the alphabet (wrapping around to z from a) by the corresponding number (shift the first letter by 5, the second letter by 1, etc. while repeating the key so that the seventh letter is also shifted by 5, the eighth letter by 1, and so on) gives:
This yields the answer Lake Havasu.
3.
4.
5.
The starting point should have been the words 'aadxaad' and 'dxxadx,' which have unusual shapes. Some trial-and-error would have produced a few plausible words, including 'dignity' and 'grudge.' Some further research would confirm that the passage is the opening of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.
Anyway, I hope you had fun trying to solve them, and I think I've learned some stuff about providing better hints. So go check out the February puzzles!